At the Intersection of Faith and Culture

You Might Be A Neocon If…

The bulk of what passes for “the right” these days consists of, not conservatives, and certainly not libertarians, but neoconservatives. In varying degrees, virtually every mainstream politician, journalist, and commentator deemed to be on the right is a neoconservative. In fact, the same can be said for many Republican voters.

So, how do you know if you are a neocon?

You just might be a neocon if:

You take offense at the very mention of the word “neoconservatism,” perhaps even going so far as to treat it as an anti-Jewish epithet.

The term “Judeo-Christian” figures much more prominently in your vocabulary than that of “Christian.”

You think that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president of all time.

You routinely lavish praise upon yesteryear’s Democratic Party, especially upon such Democrats as John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, FDR.

You speak incessantly of a war on “terror” or a war against “Islamists,” “radical Muslims,” “Islamic extremists,” “Islamofascists,” or “Islamonazis.”

You spare no occasion to invoke images of “the good war,” World War II, in connection with this war on “terror” over which you obsess.

You accuse anyone who proposes to cut the military’s budget by a single penny of being “naïve,” an “appeaser,” or otherwise weak on national security.

You accuse anyone who refuses to affirm that there really is a war on terror of being “naïve,” an “appeaser,” or otherwise weak on national security.

You obsess over the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and accuse anyone who doesn’t as being “naïve,” an “appeaser,” or otherwise weak on national security.

You brand as “anti-Semitic” anyone who talks about cutting all foreign aid, for Israel receives American foreign aid, and this would mean that Israel would no longer be a beneficiary of it.

You advocate on behalf of “comprehensive immigration reform”—i.e. amnesty—for the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants living within our borders.

If you don’t argue for amnesty, you fail to resist those who do.

You treat Ronald Wilson Reagan as a conservative hero who ignited a “revolution” (while failing to mention that the Gipper raised taxes more often than he cut them, and eliminated not a single government program, much less an agency).

You talk as if there was no conservative movement in America before William F. Buckley. Put another way, you never mention such pivotal post-WWII conservative giants as Russell Kirk, if not for whose influence there would never have even arisen a conservative movement, as even Buckley acknowledged.

You castigate as “single issue voters” those Republicans who refuse to vote for candidates whose records on, say, abortion, have been shaky. Yet at the same time, you prefer to vote for a Barack Obama, a John Kerry, or a Hillary Clinton over your own party’s candidate as long as the latter urges for a more humble foreign policy. That is, “single issue” voting is bad as long as it is any issue other than the single issue of foreign policy upon which you always cast your vote.

You talk tirelessly of individual responsibility even as you affirm political determinism when it comes to black Americans and Middle Eastern Muslims. All of the ills that plague black Americans you chalk up to the poisonous policies of the Democratic Party while all of the problems of which the Muslim world is ridden you attribute to its lack of “democracy.”

Even though Hispanics voted for Barack Obama by over 70 percent in November, and blacks voted for him by over 90 percent, you insist that the only reason for this is that Republicans have failed to “reach out” to these groups. If only their members knew what the Republican Party could do for them (more political determinism), you imply, they would flock to the GOP, for blacks, and particularly Hispanics, are “natural conservatives.”

You make claims regarding the “natural conservatism” of Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants that you would never think to make about Muslims—even though, by many measures, Muslims are far more “conservative” than Hispanics and white Americans alike.

You believe that National Review remains the premiere conservative publication, with The Weekly Standard not far behind.

You believe that Fox News is a conservative network and that talk radio is dominated by conservative hosts.

If one or more of the foregoing descriptions apply to you, then you just might be a neoconservative.

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At the Intersection of Faith and Culture

by Jack Kerwick

Regardless of one's views on religion, there is no escaping the fact that Western civilization is unintelligible in the absence of it -- of Christianity specifically. Indeed, even the secular ideologies of our generation derive their identity from the Christianity to which they are opposed. Culture and religion intersect in numerous ways. Through this blog, I explore the intricate relationship between them.